Month: August 2012

The September issue of The Monthly has arrived from the printers, with my piece on the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and the landing party at Canberra Deep Space Network Tracking Station (Tidbinbilla).

It should now be available in print and online

Martin Ollman’s terrific photo of us space tweeps in the rain by the ‘big dish’ at Canberra DSN is on the inside front cover. This is his photo of his photo.

I’m really looking forward to this – being part of a panel discussion to welcome new members to the ASA.

Event format: Members-only event. Opportunity for new members to socialise and learn about ASA, plus panel of authors and a reading by Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Residency winner Dimitra Harvey.

Panel topic: Authors and money: how authors meet their artistic and financial needs, opportunities that help them do this (grants, fellowships, non-arts work), how the changing nature of publishing is affecting the value and role of the author in society and how this in turn affects an author’s creative practices.

Very much looking forward to August 6, when, all going well, the Mars Science Lab (MSL) ‘Curiosity’ will land on Mars!

Canberra Deep Space Network (CDSN) Tidbinbilla will be at the forefront on the day as it will receive the first signals from the Mars Rover and hopefully we will know that all is well. Canberra DSN is holding an all day Mars Rover Landing Party and I will be there, catching up with the space tweeps from the original launch tweetup in November 2011.

On Monday, 6 August, at 3:31pm, the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex is set to receive signals from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover ‘Curiosity’ as it lands on the surface of the red planet.

You are invited to join us for this historic event and enjoy with other fellow space enthusiasts, the excitement and drama as the spacecraft carrying the rover enters and descends through the Martian atmosphere, and then safely lands ‘Curiosity’. We might even see the first photos from the surface!”